Memories

Public Image Ltd: Memories 

(Virgin Records, 1979)

  

"Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of pain."

 

 

I. 

 

Looking back, one of the admirable things about 22-year-old John Lydon, after he left the Sex Pistols in 1978, is he had no time for rosy retrospection. 

 

Indeed, if anything, he viewed his own punk past and Rotten persona negatively - as something to be abandoned or overcome, rather than desperately clung to or fondly remembered:

 

I'm not the same as when I began  ... This person's had enough of useless memories ... [1]

 

 

II.

 

However we attempt to configure it, the nature of one's relationship to one's own past remains an interesting question ...

 

Is it best, for example, to simplify one's own history and, in the process of simplifying it, also give it a positive gloss; are good memories (and reshaped lies) vital in maintaining self-esteem and happiness? 

 

Or is it best (if possible) to never look back; to regard nostalgia as a dangerous disease; to tie innocence and becoming to forgetfulness and/or an active denial of the past? 

 

It was, after all, because of Lydon's refusal to rest on his laurels or bullshit about his experience as a Sex Pistol, that he was able - in collaboration with Keith Levene and Jah Wobble - to deliver unto the world his Metal Box [2]. 

 

Arguably, with this album Lydon proved himself to be a genuinely creative artist (or a true star as he once signed himself to me) and not merely a derivative talent or copycat; i.e., one who uses memory to mimic ability and as a resource to plunder. 

 

As Nietzsche says, original artists and great poets seek to counter the deadening effects of an all-too-faithful memory (i.e., a mere recording capability that is of no value creatively speaking).

 

Sadly, however, Lydon never quite succeeded in getting rid of the albatross and he became a monster of passive memory, increasingly consumed by ressentiment. 

 

Now, his entire being revolves around having the last word, settling old scores, slagging off everyone he's ever known or worked with; a grotesque (and bloated) parody of his former self, it should be clear by now that he's the one who makes us feel ashamed ...

 

We let him stay too long.  

 

And he's old.    

 

Notes

 

[1] Lines from the singles 'Public Image' (Virgin Records, 1978) and 'Memories' (Virgin Records, 1979), by Public Image Limited. 

      Cf. Lydon's attitude to the past (and the importance of memory) in the single 'Hawaii' - taken from the album End of World (PiL Official, 2023) - in which he remembers all the good times shared with his wife, Nora Forster. For a discussion of this song, click here.    

 

[2] Metal Box, was PiL's second studio album released by Virgin Records in November 1979. The album is a million miles away from Never Mind the Bollocks (1977) and, indeed, a significant departure from PiL's debut album released eleven months earlier; the band moving in an increasingly avant-garde direction. Metal Box is widely regarded as a landmark of post-punk. An alternative mix of 'Memories' appears on the album - click here to play the 2009 remastered version.  

     

 

For an earlier post in which I discuss Johnny Rotten as an artist in decline, click here.

 

 

I Love You in Velvet (and Silk Underwear): Notes on the Wagner Case

Richard Wagner in a velvet jacket and hat (1871)

 

There's a man I simply dote on / unlike others of his ilk 

A velvet cloak and hat on / And underwear of silk

 

I.

 

Velvet is a type of woven tufted fabric in which the cut threads are evenly distributed, its short dense pile giving it a distinctive softness. 

 

Whilst today velvet can be made from all kinds of materials - including synthetic fibres - in the past it was typically made from the finest silk, meaning it was expensive and, before the invention of industrial power looms, difficult to produce. 

 

This fact - added to its lush appearance and feel - meant that velvet was often associated with the nobility and high offices of Church and State. King Richard II of England, for example, decreed in his will that his body should be clothed in velvet.

 

During the medieval period, velvet produced in the great Italian cities was thought to be the most magnificent in terms of texture and depth of colour. However, by the 16th-century Flemish weavers had a reputation for making velvets that rivalled those of Venice, Florence, or Genoa.  

 

 

II.

 

Other than Richard II - and George Costanza [1] - the figure who most springs to mind when thinking of those with a penchant for velvet is 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner ...

 

For Wagner, besides being perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived - and a notorious antisemite - was also a bit of a dandy, with an almost fetishistic love for the feel of velvet and silk against his skin. 

 

Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that his love of finery and frilly silk underwear eventually pushed him in the direction of cross-dressing (not that there's anything wrong with that) [2].

 

Wagner certainly had an eye for fashion and not only paid close attention to his own wardrobe, but that of his wife, Cosima, for whom he would order dresses from Milanese couturiers, providing precise instructions down to the smallest detail concerning the cut, the fabric, the trimmings, etc. 

 

Wagner also loved his velvet curtains and other home furnishings, including rose-scented cushions. 

 

Amusingly, it seems that when his number 1 fan, the young philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, came to stay with him and Cosima at their house in Tribschen, on the shores of Lake Lucerne, Wagner would send him on errands, including picking up his tailor-made silk underwear and velvet outfits - much to Nietzsche's embarrassment.  

 

Fortunately, Nietzsche was able to persuade himself that his actions were justified on the ground that a god need not only be adored, but adorned [3].

Notes

 

[1] In an episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Doodle [S6/E20], George finally gets to realise his dream - socially acceptable or not - of being able to dress from head-to-toe in velvet. The episode, dir. Andy Ackerman and written by Alec Berg and Jeff Schaffer, originally aired on 6 April 1995. Click here to watch a clip on YouTube.

[2] See Charlotte Higgins; 'Wagner - public genius with a private passion for bustles, bows and bodices', The Guardian (1 March 2007): click here.  

      It should be pointed out that Wagner informed those who were interested in the matter that he had to wear silk next to his skin, because he suffered from erypsipelas (an infection whose symptoms include painful skin-rashes).

 

[3] Nietzsche eventually wised-up and came to perceive Wagner as a decadent sorcerer, who, like some dreadful disease, contaminates culture and makes music sick. See Nietzsche contra Wagner (1899), in which he expresses his disappointment and frustration with his former idol (whilst still praising him on several occasions).

 

 

Musical bonus: Malcolm McLaren, 'I Like You in Velvet', from the album Waltz Darling (Epic, 1989): click here. The little verse at the top of this post is a paraphrase of the opening verse to this track.  

It's Creepy and It's Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky: Notes on Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie (Part 2)

Mark Fisher (1968-2017) author of 

The Weird and the Eerie (2016)

 

 

I. 

Fisher's opening discussion of the eerie is perhaps my favourite section of his book and deserves to be quoted at some length:

"As with the weird, the eerie is worth reckoning with in its own right as a particular kind of aesthetic experience. Although this experience is certainly triggered by particular cultural forms, it does not originate in them. You could say rather that certain tales, certain novels, certain films, evoke the feeling of the eerie, but this sensation is not a literary or filmic invention. As with the weird, we can and often do encounter the sensation of the eerie [...] without the need for specific forms of cultural meditation. For instance, there is no doubt that the sensation of the eerie clings to certain kinds of physical spaces and landscapes." [a] 

 

But the feeling of the eerie is very different from that of the weird: "The simplest way to get this difference is by thinking about the [...] opposition [...] between presence and absence." [61]

 

The weird is the presence of that which does not belong; "the eerie, by contrast, is constituted by a failure of absence or by a failure of presence" [61]. That's a nice definition. It means that the sensation of the eerir occurs "either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something" [61]. 

 

The only way to dispell this sensation is with knowledge; for the eerie concerns the unknown (although that doesn't mean that all mysteries generate the eerie).

 

Finally, Fisher returns to a point made in the introduction to his book. Behind all the manifestations of the eerie lies the question of agency: 

 

 "In the case of the failure of absence, the question concerns the existence of agency as such. [...] In the case of the failure of presence, the question concerns the particular nature of the agent at work." [63]

 

The key point is: "Since the eerie turns crucially on the problem of agency, it is about the [often invisible and/or unconscious] forces that govern our lives and the world." [64]

 

 

II. 

 

It makes me happy that Fisher discusses the work of Daphne du Maurier, as I'm a devotee of her work. 

 

(On the other hand, it makes me feel ashamed of my ignorance when he discusses the work of Christopher Priest about whom I know nothing at all.)  

 

'The Birds' (1952) is a tale I wrote about on Torpedo the Ark back in Feb 2019: click here. 

 

Funny enough, I don't remember describing it as eerie - I think I stressed its malevolence, ambiguity, and inhuman brilliance - but that's not to say Fisher isn't right to use this term. Maybe the fact that the birds seem to possess an unnatural degree of agency is eerie.       

 

Fisher also discusses 'Don't Look Now' (1971), another tale I have twice referred to on this blog: click here and here. Whilst on neither occasion did I use the word eerie, again, I understand why Fisher does; because there is definitely something eerie about fate as a form of obscured agency [b].    

 

And as for the unconscious - if it exists - of course it's eerie, full as it is of absences, gaps, and other negativities. 

 

 

III.

 

Mightn't it be that there's a subjective element in what constitutes an eerie landscape? That eeriness, like beauty or any other aesthetic phenomena, is in the eye of the beholder? 

 

Probably. 

 

Though that's not to deny that a landscape - as an object in its own right - will often demand "to be engaged with on its own terms" [76] and if it happens to be "desolate, atmospheric, solitary" [77] well then it's eerie, no matter who happens to perceive it.

 

Insensitivity to the mood of an environment - be it moorland or an inner city wasteland - is a failure of the individual and can be a dangerous failing too. For we underestimate the powerful agency of a terrain at our own peril. 

 

We might, after Lawrence, call this mood-cum-agency the spirit of place and think in terms of "different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity" [c]. This sounds a bit like pseudo-science, but the spirit of place is, insists Lawrence, a great reality, however we choose to describe it.

 

Of course, the spirit of place needn't always be malevolent and openness to it might lead one into an ecstatic encounter with otherness that is "pulsing beyond the confines of the mundane" [81] and is "achingly alluring even as it is disconcertingly alien" [81] [d]. 

 

In other words, sometimes wandering outside the gate brings joy and can help restore a sense of primordial wonder (which is precisely why Nietzsche encourages philosophers to do their thinking in unexplored realms of knowledge).   

 

 

IV.  

 

As someone who has been researching in the field of thanatology for the best part of two decades, a section entitled 'Eerie Thanatos' is bound to attract my interest ...

 

By this term, Fisher refers to "a transpersonal (and transtemporal) death drive, in which the 'psychological' emerges as the product of forces from the outside" [82]. The theme is beautifully explored, says Fisher, in the work of Nigel Kneale, an author best known for writing Quatermass and the Pit [e].

 

For Kneale - as presumably for Fisher (and for me) - "the material world in which we live is more profoundly alien and strange" [83] than most people care to imagine. And rather than "insisting upon the pre-eminence of the human subject who is alleged to be the privileged bearer of reason, Kneale shows that an enquiry into the nature of what the world is like is also inevitably an unraveling of what human beings had taken themselves to be" [83]. 

 

To quote from Fisher at length once more if I may:

 

"At the heart of Kneale's work is the question of agency and intent. According to some philosophers, it is the capacity for intentionality which definitively separates human beings from the natural world. Intentionality includes intent as we ordinarily understand it, but really refers to the capacity to feel a cerain way about things. Rivers may possess agency - they affect changes - but the do not care about what they do; they do not have any sort of attitude towards the world. Kneale's most famous creation, the scientist Bernard Quatermass, could be said to belong to a trajectory of Radical Enlightenment thinking which is troubled  by this distinction. Radical Enlightenment thinkers such as Spinoza, Darwin, and Freud continually pose the question: to what extent can the concept of intentionality be applied to human beings, never mind to the natural world? The question is posed in part because of the thoroughgoing naturalisation that Radical Enlightenment thought had insisted upon: if human beings fully belong to the so-called natural world, then on what grounds can a special case be made for them? The conclusions that Radical Enlightenment thinking draws are the exact opposite of the claims for which so-called new materialists such as Jane Bennett [f] have argued. New materialists such as Bennett accept that the distinction between human beings and the natural world is no longer tenable, but they construe this to mean that many of the features previously ascribed only to human beings are actually distributed throughout nature. Radical Enlightenment goes in the opposite direction, by questioning whether there is any such thing as intentionality at all; and if there is, could human beings be said to possess it?" [83-84] 

 

That's the direction I head in too: a direction that leads to the Nietzschean conclusion that life is only a very rare and unusual way of being dead. A conclusion which Freud, following Nietzsche, also (reluctantly) arrived at in his work on Thanatos and the death drive:

 

"By striking contrast with the new materialist idea of 'vibrant matter', which suggests that all matter is to some extent alive, the conjecture implied Freud's positioning of Thanatos is that nothing is alive: life is a region of death. [...] What is called organic life is actually a kind of folding of the inorganic." [84]

 

But ...

 

"But the inorganic is not the passive, inert counterpart to an allegedly self-propelling life; on the contrary, it possesses its own agency. There is a death drive, which in its most radical formulation is not a drive towards death, but a drive of death." [84-85] 

 

Thus ...

 

"The inorganic is the impersonal pilot of everything, including that which seems to be personal and organic. Seen from the perspective of Thanatos, we ourselves become an exemplary case of the eerie: there is an agency at work in us (the unconscious, the death drive), but it is not where or what we expected it to be." [85] 

 

This argument - which I believe to be correct - is surely the most important in Fisher's book. I'm less convinced, however, by his (somewhat hopeful) suggestion that science - as an equally impersonal process - offers us a way beyond. To paraphrase Quatermass himself: Maybe death is as good as it gets. Perhaps it's a cosmic law.  

 

 

V.

 

Fisher provides an excellent reading of Margaret Atwood's novel Surfacing (1972) as a book which, in some respects, "belongs to the same moment as such texts as Luce Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus" [101]. 

 

That is to say, works which "attempt to rise to the challenge of treating discontent, abjection and psychopathology as traces of an as yet unimaginable outside rather than as symptoms of maladjustment" [101]. 

 

Having said that, Fisher thinks that the novel's unnamed narrator at the point of schiophrenic break-rapture is actually more in tune with Ben Woodard's dark vitalism [g], which is an interesting idea, but not one I wish to discuss here, as frankly, I can't quite see how the latter relates to the eerie. This might be shortsightedness, or a sign of my own intellectual limitations; or it could be that Fisher is now hallucinating visions of the eerie and seeing it in places where it really doesn't exist. 

 

So far, I've enjoyed and been impressed by the manner in which Fisher has taken a rather hackneyed idea - the eerie - and given it an original twist as well as a strong degree of conceptual rigour. But I think he should have wrapped things up with the notion of eerie thanatos, having already offered us his central insight; i.e., that the eerie is ultimately the trace of an inhuman (and inorganic) drive. 

For the first time, after a hundred odd pages, I'm starting to get just a wee bit bored and to feel that Fisher is now simply namechecking a few more of his favourite things à la Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965) and flexing his muscles like an intellectual version of Tony Holland [h].

 

Having said that, I don't like to abandon a book before the end once I've begun to read it. And so, let's continue, fast-forwarding past Jonathan Glazer's 2013 film Under the Skin [i] and arriving at the final couple of chapters, 'Alien Traces' and ''The Eeriness Remains' ...

VI.

 

Any consideration of outer space, says Fisher in the first of these chapters, "quickly engenders a sense of the eerie" [110]: is there anybody (anything) out there? Again, I suppose that's true - so obviously true, in fact, that it could have fallen from the mouth of Sybil Fawlty [j].  

 

Fisher also claims that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a "major contribution to the cinema of the eerie" [112]. 

 

But it's also one of the most boring films I have ever had to sit through and I'm not sure I'd agree with this judgement; I mean, I can see that of Kubrick's The Shining (1980) - and enjoyed Fisher's analysis of the latter - but 2001 ... I'm unconvinced.  

 

Let's just say that when it comes to eeriness, ghostly twins always trump aliens ... and if anyone thinks I'm going to discuss the "possibility of an eerie love" [121], well, they've got another think coming; I'm afraid that I do find this suggestion sentimental "as well as emotionally and conceptually excessive" [121]. 

 

VII.

 

I mentioned in section III of this post how the eerie needn't always be malevolent and openness to it might lead one into an ecstatic encounter with otherness; that wandering outside the gate may even bring joy and help restore a sense of primordial wonder.

 

Well, Fisher clearly agrees with this and that is why he closes his study with a discussion of Joan Lindsay's brilliant novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967):   

 

"Not only because Picnic at Hanging Rock is practically a textbook example of an eerie novel - it includes disappearances, amnesia, a geological anomaly, an intensely atmspheric terrain - but also because Lindsay's rendition of the eerie has a positivity, a languorous and delirious allure, that is absent or suppressed in so many other eerie texts." [122]

 

Whereas the outside is usually seen as dangerous and deadly, Picnic at Hanging Rock invokes an outside which involves "a passage beyond the petty repressions and mean confines of common experience into a heightened atmosphere of oneiric lucidity" [122]. 

 

Fisher concludes: "The novel seems to justify the idea that a sense of the eerie is created and sustained simply by withholding information." [126][k]  

 

I could elucidate, but the above note seems to encourage one to recognise that sometimes it's best to say no more ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, (Repeater Books, 2016), p. 61. Future page references to this work will be given in the main text.   

[b] Etymologically speaking, it's weird - rather than eerie - that suggests fate; the Old English term wyrd meant having the power to shape the latter and thus control one's destiny. Readers will probably recall that the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth, often known as the Weird Sisters, have this ability.     

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Spirit of Place', Studies in Classic America Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambride University Press, 2003), p. 17.  

 

[d] Edward Hunter and Simon Solomon seem to understand this in their short film Room (2010) set on the North Yorkshire Moors. Unfortunately, I can provide no further details of this work or give any links at this time.   

 

[e] Quatermass and the Pit is an influential British science-fiction serial transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. A Hammer Films adaptation was released with the same title in 1967, directed by Roy Ward Baker and scripted by Kneale.

      Fisher also discusses the fantasy novel Red Shift (Collins, 1973) by Alan Garner in his chapter on eerie thanatos in relation to the question of human free will, but this is another book and author about which and about whom I again know nothing and so prefer to pass over in silence here (with no disrespect to Garner).       

 

[f] I discussed Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter (Duke University Press, 2010) in a post published on 10 April 2015, in which I express my dislike of her material vitalism: click here. 

 

[g] See Woodard's Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation and the Creep of Life (Zero Boks, 2012). 

 

[h] Tony Holland is a British bodybuilder known for his musical muscle man act. He achieved national fame in the UK after appearing on Opportunity Knocks in 1964 - which, unbelievably, he won six times. 

      Click here to watch him perform (joined by Kenny Lynch) to what became his cha-cha theme tune; 'Wheels', originally recorded (and released as a single which reached number 8 in the UK charts) by the String-A-Longs in 1960. As a very young child, I always found it weirdly disturbing when Holland came on TV and hearing this tune today still makes my skin crawl.     

 

[i] I intend to (i) watch this film and (ii) write a future post on it - and that's why I don't discuss it here. 

      I don't know why I haven't already seen this film; I'm beginning to think I sometimes have blackouts like Rip Van Winkle and when I wake up the world has moved on and certain cultural productions have simply passed me by. The fact that I have been denied an opportunity of seeing Scarlett Johnasson on screen playing an alien young woman stalking human males really irritates.

 

[j] I'm referring here to a famous exchange between Basil and Sybil in the final episode of Fawlty Towers [S2/E6] entitled 'Basil the Rat' (dir. Bob Spiers, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, 1979): click here. 

 

[k] As Fisher reminds us: 

      "In the case of Picnic at Hanging Rock, this literally happened: the form in which the novel was published was the result of an act of excision. In her original manuscript, Lindsay provided a solution of sorts to the enigma [at the heart of the novel], in a concluding chapter that her publishers [wisely] encouraged her to remove [...] This 'Chapter Eighteen' was published separately, as The Secret of Hanging Rock [1987]." [126] 

 

 

To read the first part of this post - on Fisher's notion of the weird - click here.  

 

  

Yiff Yiff Hooray! Three Cheers for Furries and the Otherkin

 

Three members of the furry fandom and an 

elf-girl member of the otherkin community

 

 

Opening Remarks 

 

The following material consists of revised extracts from Chapter 5 of Zoophilia, Vol. III of The Treadwell's Papers (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

It was originally presented as part of a series of talks at Treadwell's Bookshop in 2006 and might be said to have anticipated the direction our culture was heading vis-à-vis questions of identity, etc.

 

These questions, however, have mostly been thought through (and fought over) in terms of sex, gender, and race, rather than our humanity as such. 

 

Thus, even though in the years since I first wrote on the subject of becoming-animal and/or becoming-other, there has been far more academic and media attention given to therians, furries, and otherkin, most members of the public still remain blissfully unaware of the term transspeciesism, even whilst obsessively worrying about issues to do with transsexuality and gender fluidity.

 

 

The Furry Fandom

 

I.

 

Whilst there's a level of crossover with the therian community - which I discussed in a recently published post [1] - the furry fandom is often looked down upon by members of the former, who regard furries as frivolous and lacking in respect for the true nature of the animals they like to dress up as. 

 

On the other paw, however, members of the fandom often accuse therianthropes of taking the idea of metamorphosis too far and themselves too seriously. 

 

I suppose, if one wanted to be unkind and offer a crude stereotype of both parties, one could say that whilst therians are genuinely barking, furries are simply mimicking animal noises. 

 

 

II.

 

Essentially, the furry fandom is a movement that celebrates the hybridization of humans and animals in cartoons, comics, and films. It is, therefore, predominantly composed of persons with artistic and literary interests, rather than occult or fetishistic leanings. 

 

That said, many members of the fandom do have a strong attraction to animal cosplay and like to indulge their transformation fantasies - some of which are overtly erotic in character and involve the loss or rippage of human clothing - whilst being suitably attired in a fursuit. 

 

Those who have a particular penchant for furry sex are sometimes labelled as furverts and, whilst these people compose only a small minority of the fandom, they are the ones who - rightly or wrongly - excite most interest from those outside of the fandom [2]. 

 

 

III.

 

The furry fandom started as a discussion group that met at various science fiction and comic-book conventions in the early 1980s and who were interested in all kinds of anthropomorphic characters, but particularly those covered in fur. By 1987, enough interest had been generated for there to be a furry convention in its own right and these have continued to be held annually in Europe and the US ever since [3].

 

With the rise and spread of the internet, the furry fandom has also grown rapidly around the world as an on-line community with many of its own specialised sites and virtual meeting places.

 

Those fans possessing handicraft skills, often like to make their own plush toys, or design elaborate costumes in a wide range of styles and worn either for private pleasure, or when participating at furry events. 

 

Whilst those fans who are more technologically-minded, often create their own anthropomorphic animal avatars called - predictably enough - fursonas (or tiny-bodies), via which they engage in (sometimes kinky) role-playing games with others of their kind in a virtual world.

 

 

IV.

 

As mentioned, for the most part, furries and therians don't usually have much to do with one another and the two phenomena legitimately deserve to be regarded as separate concepts attracting different types of people. 

 

However, there are those - known as furry lifestylers - who blur this distinction by occupying the space between the two categories. 

 

These individuals have beliefs similar to those who practice animal related religions and philosophies, such as shamanism. Thus it is that some lifestylers often claim they have a totem animal that watches over them, or that they are the reincarnation of an animal spirit. 

 

Other lifestylers, meanwhile, are keen to promote the idea that animal instincts exist within humans as part of our genetic code and hope to translate man back into nature, as Nietzsche would say; i.e., to strip away the anthropocentric conceit that has blinded us to our own reality and fooled us into vainly thinking we are of a different origin and higher status to other animals. 

 

That may be, as Nietzsche says, a queer and possibly insane task, but it's certainly a revaluation of values [4]. 

 

 

The Otherkin

 

I.

 

The term otherkin is a rather nice neologism, coined in the early-mid-1990s when it became clear that a distinct new sub-culture was emerging on-line out of various other communities. 

 

Like therians, members of the otherkin like to think of themselves as essentially non-human, to a lesser or greater degree. But whereas therians believe themselves to be part-animal, the otherkin often regard themselves as being part mythological or legendary creature; such as centaurs, mermaids, or elves, for example.

 

Some members of the otherkin also identify in terms of fictional characters who have arisen within modern popular culture; and some, albeit far fewer in number, identify as plants, abstract concepts, or natural phenomena, which is philosophically interesting and one wonders if those who think of themselves as a weather system, for example, wish to become-imperceptible - i.e., reach the point at which they can no longer be identified in human terms, but only acknowledged as a chaos of non-subjectified effects and impersonal elements that must be mapped meteorologically ...?

 

If so, that's kind of cool, speaking as a Deleuzian ...

 

 

II.

 

Whilst almost all otherkin insist that they are neither fantasizing nor role-playing - claiming, for example, that their nonhuman aspect is spiritual in nature and not merely an assumed persona or self-constructed identity - others attribute it to unusual psychology or neurodivergence and do not hold any spiritual beliefs. 

 

Some even suggest that they are biologically other, considering themselves to be directly descended from the species with which they identify via a primeval marriage at some point with mankind. Again, that's very interesting; it reminds one of the fact that stories of humans descending from animals, giants, aliens, or gods are common among tribal peoples all over the world and very often involve illicit sexual relations.

 

Others, meanwhile, believe in a multitude of parallel universes, wherein supernatural or sapient non-human beings exist to whom they are psychically attuned or able to visit via a form of astral projection. I don't know if many otherkin speak in terms of possession, but such a concept surely provides an explanation for their altered state of consciousness and associated behaviours that is found in many religions.

 

But again, just as I understand why furries don't wish to be thought furverts, I understand why members of the otherkin can be a little uncomfortable with being thought part of a weird neo-pagan religion or occultists (despite sharing an obvious interest in the paranormal). 

 

Sadly, there's already a peculiar degree of public fear and suspicion (as well as scorn) directed their way - as there is for others who are perceived as threatening the predominant moral and social order - so no need to also add to this by openly declaring themselves to be devil-worshippers or involved in the dark arts.      

 

Personally, whatever beliefs the otherkin may choose to hold and however they may choose to modify their physical appearance so as too resemble the being it is they identify with (or as), I wish them well and would happily fly the Fairy Star flag if asked to do so ... [5]

 

      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'Madness and Animality: Notes on Therianthropy' (6 Oct 2023): click here.

 

[2] It's perhaps not surprising that the question of sex has at times been a source of controversy and division within the furry fandom. Some members strongly object to what they regard as the distasteful and deviant aspects amongst the community and the term furvert has been coined to specifically identify a sub-section of the fandom that deliberately sexualises anthropomorphic animal characters. 

      Many outsiders also find the pornification of cute and childish animal imagery troubling. But furverts are quick to stress that they have no interest in paedophilia - anymore than they do in zoophilia - and that furvert activity consists primarily of creating, exchanging, and collecting illustrations of their own particular furry fetish character online; a genre of erotic image making known as yiffy art; yiff being a widely used slang term within the furry fandom which, like fuck, has various meanings, applications, degrees of nuance, and which etymologically derives from an onomatopoeic representation of the sound made by mating foxes.

      Whilst it's certainly the case that not all furries are furverts, whether the more prudish members of the fandom like it or not, there is an overlap between furverts and those who enjoy pornography, as well as participants within the world of BDSM and - fairly or unfairly - this has attracted a fair deal of attention, even inspiring an episode of CSI back in 2003 (S4/E5: 'Fur and Loathing') and a book by Michael Cogliantry in 2009 (Furverts, Chronicle Books) - both of which infuriated many furries. 

 

[3] Click here for a peek at ConFuzzled 2023, held at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel (26-30 May).  

 

[4] See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, VII. 230.

 

[5] A regular heptagram known as the Elven Star or Fairy Star is used to denote nonhuman identity. It was designed by the Elf Queen's Daughters and first published in the Green Egg newsletter in March 1976. The background colour added here is my own and does not (as far as I know) have any significance within otherkin circles.  

 

You'll Never Turn the Vinegar Into Jam: On the Figure of the Tiger in the Philosophy of D. H. Lawrence

Most of their time, tigers pad and slouch in burning peace.

Yet they also drink blood. [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Although I wouldn't name it as one of Lawrence's totemic animals, nevertheless the tiger often appears within his work and held an important place in his philosophical imagination as one of the great realities of reality; i.e., a living thing that has come into its own fullness of being: 

 

"The tiger blazed transcendent into immortal darkness." [2]

 

"The tiger is the supreme manifestation of the senses made absolute." [3]

 

For Lawrence, in other words, the tiger is physical perfection and counters the bodiless idealism of those who, like Shelley, sought pure spiritual consummation: 

 

"The tiger was a terrible problem to Shelley, who wanted life in terms of the lamb." [4]  

 

 

II. 

 

In the the first essay of the Genealogy, Niezsche argues that it's perfectly natural for lambs to hate and fear tigers, wolves, and eagles. But mistaken to believe that they are morally superior to those animals that prey on them; the latter are not evil and act out of instinctive necessity, not cruelty.    

 

To expect fierce and powerful carnivores to lie down with meek and mild herbivores is as absurd as thinking you can turn the vinegar into jam; "a tiger is a tiger not a lamb, mein herr" [5] and cannot behave otherwise (and nor can the lamb - a creature which acts from weakness, not goodness).   

 

What's more, Lawrence argues that just as the tiger requires the lamb for sustenance, the lamb needs the tiger; for only the juxtaposition of the tiger "keeps the lamb a quivering, vivid, beautiful fleet thing"  [6]. 

 

Take away or exterminate the tiger, and all you're left with is a flock of letzte Schafe; happy, but little more than woolly clods of meat. Fear and suffering are vital principles; they help concentrate the soul, in man as well as lamb. 

 

Thank God, says Lawrence, for the tigers who liberate us from the "abominable tyranny of these greedy, negative sheep" [7]. And not only does he affirm the spirit of the tiger, he dreams of becoming-tiger and of making the tiger's way his own:

 

"Like the tiger in the night, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until [...] in the sensual ecstasy, having drunk all blood and devoured all flesh, I am become again the eternal Fire ..." [8]   

 

 

III.

 

Lawrence being Lawrence, however, he soon starts to oscillate from one pole of delirium to another and concede that the tiger's way - the way of the flesh and becoming "transfigured into magnificent brindled flame" [9] - is not the only form of ecstasy. 

 

Man can also become-deer, become-lamb, or, indeed, become-Christian, and move beyond the tiger, finding consummation not in the devouring of those who are weaker, or even in the negative ecstasy of offering non-resistance and being eaten oneself, but in acknowledging otherness:

 

"The Word of the tiger is: my senses are supremely Me, and my senses are God in me. But Christ said: God is in the others, who are not-me. In all the multitude of others is God, and this is the great God, greater than the God which is Me. God is that which is not-me. 

      And this is the Christian truth, a truth complementary to the pagan affirmation: 'God is that which is Me.'

      God is that which is Not-Me. In realising the Not-Me I am consummated, I become infinite. In turning the other cheek I submit to God who is greater than I am, other than I am, who is in that which is not me. This is the supreme consummation. To achieve this consummation I love my neighbour as myself." [10]

 

But then, having said that, Lawrence warns of the danger of pushing this ideal too far; of becoming too selfless whilst, somewhat paradoxically, identifying oneself with all that is other, like Walt Whitman, who aches with amorous love and insists with false exuberance on grasping everyone and everthing to his bosom, believing as he does in One Identity as the great desideratum [11]. 

 

For this path ends in nihilism and the triumph of the Machine and it's a "horrible thing to see tigers caught up and entangled in machinery [...] a chaos beyond chaos, an unthinkable hell" [12].   

  

IV. 

 

Ultimately, Lawrence's sharp-clawed feline philosophy can probably be best construed as tragic in the Nietzschean sense; one which understands according to the desire of death as well as according to the desire of life and is true for all things that emerge from the matrix of chaos, including "the tiger and the fragile dappled doe" [13].  

 

The former is a blossom of pure significance, born of the sun. But the tiger, like the leopard, needs to quench herself with the blood (or soft fire) of Bambi, so that she too might know tenderness when nursing her young and dreaming her dreams in stillness:

 

"For even the mother-tiger is quenched with insuperable tenderness when the milk is in her udder; she lies still, and her dreams are frail like fawns." [14]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A misremembered couple of lines from 'Glory', by D. H. Lawrence; The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University press, 2013), p. 430.   

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Crown', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 270. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Lemon Gardens', Twilight in Italy, in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert, (Cambridge Univrrsity Press, 1994), p. 117. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Fenimore Cooper's Anglo-American Novels', in Studies in Classic American Literature (First Version: 1918-19), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen , (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 214.

 

[5] I'm quoting here from the brilliant Kander and Ebb song 'Mein Herr', from the musical Cabaret (1966). 

      To expect a tiger or leopard or lion to lie down with its prey is, says Lawrence, as vain as hoping "for the earth to cast no shadow, or for burning fire to give no heat". See 'The Reality of Peace', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays ... p. 49. 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Fenimore Cooper's Anglo-American Novels', in Studies in Classic American Literature ... p. 214. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays ... p. 42.

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Lemon Gardens', Twilight in Italy, in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays ... p. 117.

 

[9] Ibid.

 

[10] Ibid., pp. 119-120. 

 

[11] I have discussed Walt Whitman and his fatal idealism elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here.

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Lemon Gardens', Twilight in Italy, in Twilight in Italy and Other Essays ... p. 121.

 

[13] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays ... p. 38. 

 

[14] Ibid., p. 48. 

 

 

For a related post which anticipates this one and in which I evoke the spirit of the Champawat Tiger, click here.  

 

 

On the Case of Russell Brand and Mark Fisher

Messrs. Fisher & Brand

 

 

I. 

 

One of the more unexpected consequences of the media storm surrounding the allegations of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse levelled at the comic revolutionary-cum-spiritual wellness guru Russell Brand is that it has reignited an online controversy surrounding a ten-year-old essay by political philosopher-cum-cultural commentator Mark Fisher, in which he openly expresses his admiration for the former ...  

 

Published in 2013, 'Exiting the Vampire Castle' [1] is probably my favourite piece by Fisher, despite the fact - or, if I'm being honest, it's probably due to the fact - that at the time it pissed a lot of people off.

 

Here, I'd like to revisit the essay, particularly those sections that refer to Brand - whose case increasingly fascinates me - and then discuss a retrospective defence of Fisher and his text, written by one of his closest allies, Matt Colquhoun, in response to the present hoo-ha.

 

 

II.

 

Fisher himself concedes that his essay was born out of depression and exhaustion. But that doesn't, of course, lessen its brilliance or weaken its arguments. Tired, fed-up, and bored is often a great combination when it comes to producing work that has a vitriolic edge; happy souls don't always create the best art or have the most interesting ideas. 

 

The trick is to weaponise and affirm negative thoughts and feelings and not wallow in them or allow them to coalesce into bad conscience and ressentiment; i.e., one must learn to hate with a certain gaiety, like Nietzsche, who is very much present in 'Exiting the Vampire Castle'.          

 

Like Fisher, I don't care so much about what an individual has said or done - no matter how objectionable - I worry more about the manner in which they are "personally vilified and hounded" afterwards. It's this that leaves behind the stench of witch-hunting moralism. 

 

This wasn't said by Fisher at the time with Russell Brand in mind, but I repeat it here and now thinking very much of the latter.

 

I'm sure that Brand's behaviour in the past was appalling at times; though whether it was also criminal is another matter. But the behaviour of his critics - many of whom were former friends and colleagues - as they rush to disassociate themselves from him is just as shocking and just as vile.

 

Fisher crossed paths with Brand at a so-called People's Assembly, held in Ipswich. Recalling the encounter, he confesses that he'd "long been an admirer of Brand - one of the few big-name comedians on the current scene to come from a working class background."

 

Then, in an astonishing series of paragraphs, Fisher couples a passionate endoresement of Brand to an excoriating critique of those po-faced puritans on the left of the political spectrum who sneer and wag fingers at him. For Fisher, Brand is not only cool, sexy, and intelligent, but queer "in the way that popular culture used to be". 

 

If, as those on the moralising left claim, Brand is prone to making inappropriate and offensive remarks, thereby breaching "the bland conventions of mainstream media 'debate'", Fisher is prepared to cut him some slack - and I respect him for that. 

 

Yes, Brand should apologise for some of his behaviour and sexist language; but any such apology should be accepted, says Fisher, in a spirit of comradeship and solidarity. And above all Brand should be admired for daring to bring up the taboo topic of class - one that so embarrasses many on the left with their public school backgrounds and ultra-posh accents [2].            

 

Admired too, for standing up to smug and condescending TV interviewers, like Jeremy Paxman, who seem to think celebrities shouldn't express political views and that "working class people should remain in poverty, obscurity and impotence lest they lose their 'authenticity'" [3]. 

 

Fisher writes:

 

"For some of us, Brand's forensic take-down of Paxman was intensely moving, miraculous; I couldn't remember the last time a person from a working class background had been given the space to so consummately destroy a class 'superior' using intelligence and reason. This wasn't Johnny Rotten swearing at Bill Grundy - an act of antagonism which confirmed rather than challenged class stereotypes. Brand had outwitted Paxman - and the use of humour was what separated Brand from the dourness of so much 'leftism'."

Brand, concludes Fisher, is an inspirational figure. That is to say, one who "makes people feel good about themselves; whereas the moralising left specialises in making people feed bad, and is not happy until their heads are bent in guilt and self-loathing" [4].  

 

III.

What then, you might ask, is wrong with anything said here by Fisher in 2013?

 

The answer - as far as I can see - is nothing. The claim that this essay caused lasting damage to his reputation is exaggerated and overlooks the fact that there are some readers, like me, who think highly of Fisher mostly on the basis of this text. Nevertheless, Fisher's essay caused a big fuss then and it's causing a big fuss once again.

 

And this is due to the controversy surrounding the (undeniably charismatic if slightly unhinged) figure of Russell Brand, who, let us remind ourselves is innocent under the law, having not been found guilty of - or even charged with - any crime of a sexual nature and who completely refutes the accusations made against him in the media by several women relating to the period between 2006 and 2013, when he was at the height of his fame.

 

Despite this, Fisher is once again being painted by some not only as an early (and aggressive) opponent of woke politics and cancel culture, but as an anti-feminist who, in celebrating Brand back in 2013, wilfully turned a blind eye to the latter's already apparent sexism, misogyny, and abuse of power. 

Matt Colquhoun - a writer and photographer known for their work on Fisher's writings and their relationship with the latter [5] - is having none of this, however, and says that such a grotesque caricature makes Fisher "wholly unrecognisable to those who knew him or who are more familiar with his work" [6]. 

 

Colquhoun goes on to argue that post-Vampire Castle and following his death in 2017, Fisher has "too often been reduced to a pawn in an online discourse that obscures the ways in which he moved on from this polemic to build a far more positive project ..." [7]  

 

Fisher's celebration of Brand was, writes Colquhoun, due to his life-long fascination with "people who, at one time or another [...] bridged the gap between the mainstream and the underground" [8] and believed in the revolutionary potential of a (chaotic and often comic) popular modernism, that someone such as Brand seems to personify.  

 

So far, so good: Colquhoun hasn't said anything that I find problematic, although, if I'm being completely honest, the claim that Fisher moved on in order to construct a far more positive project is one that makes me slightly concerned. 

 

But the following paragraph from Colquhoun really rankles, however: 

 

"Then and now, the inclusion of Brand in Fisher's argument stains it overall. The allegations now facing Brand, who was already mistrusted by many for his sexual politics [...] are all the more damning and serious. For some, they also vindicate the ire first directed at Fisher over a decade ago. But whereas Brand is accused of very real crimes, Fisher was only guilty of an intellectual misstep - one that he would spend the next few years trying to remedy." [9]

 

That, I think, is an outrageous statement and I'm almost certain that Fisher would not approve of the language of moral pollution; as if the very mention of Brand's name is tainting. 

 

And what, pray, would Fisher think of the claim that unproven allegations are damning? Or the idea of vindication - a term also drawn from a moral vocabulary? Or that he was guilty of an intellectual misstep - as if a philosopher should always walk carefully along a well-beaten and carefully sign-posted path.

 

I don't doubt that Colquhoun's motives in writing their piece for the New Statesman were well-intentioned and honourable. But I really don't think Fisher needs to have anyone apologise on his behalf, or attempt to justify his work. 

 

And to be reminded once more of the claim made by some of Fisher's online supporters that his "defiant support of Brand, against advice to the contrary, was a product of mental ill-health" [10], is, I think, shameful.    

 

If he has a grave, then I fear that poor Mark Fisher will be turning in it ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Mark Fisher, 'Exiting the Vampire Castle', Open Democracy (24 Nov 2013): click here. 

 

[2] Writing about the fragile and fleeting nature of class consciousness, Fisher says:

      "The petit bourgeoisie which dominates the academy and the culture industry has all kinds of subtle deflections and pre-emptions which prevent the topic even coming up, and then, if it does come up, they make one think it is a terrible impertinence, a breach of etiquette, to raise it."

 

[3] Jeremy Paxman did his best to make Russell Brand look a fool on BBC's Newsnight on 23 October 2013, but, arguably, it was the latter who exposed the former for what he was. The full interview can be watched by clicking here. 

[4] The latter, says Fisher, are driven by "a priest's desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant's desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster's desire to be one of the in-crowd" and they inhabit the Vampires' Castle - an institution which "feeds on the energy and anxieties and vulnerabilities" of the young and lives by "converting the suffering of particular groups - the more 'marginal' the better - into academic capital". This is a hugely important idea and one which I hope to return to and discuss in a future post.

 

[5] Matt Colquhoun is the author of Egress: On Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher (Repeater Books, 2020). Colquhoun also edited Fisher's Postcapitalist Desire lectures (Repeater Books, 2021). They blog at xenogothic.com: click here.

 

[6-10] Matt Colquhoun, 'Mark Fisher was not Russell Brand', in the New Statesman, (18 Sept 2023): click here. 

      Readers who are not subscribers to this publication and don't wish to register in order to be able to access three free articles a month online, will sadly come up against a paywall. I'm grateful to Colquhoun for kindly emailing me a copy of their text, so that I could read it at my convenience.     

A Brief Note on the Queer Gothic, etc.

Margarita Dadykina: Cathy's Ghost (2019) 

Sculpted figure (58 x 20 cm)

I. 

 

Sometimes, a literary genre and a theoretical framework can become so inextricably entwined that it is difficult to discuss the one without reference to the other. Thus it is, for example, that next month sees the publication of a new collection of essays exploring the gothic from a queer perspective [1].   

 

This notion of the queer gothic was one that I dipped in-and-out of over ten years ago, producing three papers presented at Treadwell's Bookshop; the first on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891); the second on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850); and the third on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) [2]. 

 

Anyway, in anticipation of the Edinburgh Companion, here are some remarks I made back in 2014 in an attempt to (loosely) define what I understood by gothic queerness (as well as related terms, including the uncanny and the perverse) ... 

 

II. 

 

My concern with the gothic relates to a form of fiction that emerges during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. I'm not concerned with Germanic tribes migrating about early Europe causing trouble for the Romans, or spiky-forms of medieval architecture (even if the ruins of the latter often provide a setting for many a gothic tale). 

 

Primarily, then, it's to a bizarre, yet, in some ways, rather conventional literary genre I refer when I use the term gothic, whilst happily acknowledging that elements of this have infected many other cultural forms and fields of inquiry, including queer studies. Indeed, such is the level of intimacy between queer studies and gothic studies that many scholars promiscuously drift back and forth from discussing the politics of desire, gender and sexual nonconformity to issues within hauntology and demonology. 

 

Obviously, this is facilitated by the fact that not only do gothic fictions and queer theories have common obsessions, but they often rely on a shared language of transgression to explore ideas. It has even been suggested that the gothic imaginatively enables queer and provides an important historical model of queer politics and thinking [3].

 

We can certainly never overestimate the role that gothic fiction played in the unfolding history of sexuality. For not only does it anticipate the later codification and deployment of sexualities, but it also participates in what Foucault terms the perverse implantation of these new forms of subjectivity [4]. 

 

If it is generally accepted that Horace Walpole's Castle of Ortanto is the first gothic novel - published in 1764 - it is also usually agreed that by the publication of Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820, the popular craze for gothic fiction had already peaked. 

 

Nevertheless, the genre continued to flourish and mutate at the margins of more respectable literature in the decades that followed. Indeed, many of the works now most commonly associated with it were written in the late-Victorian period: this includes Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). 

 

However, whilst slowly changing in form, content, and setting over the years, many things remained the same within the gothic text to the point of cliché; not least of all the continued narrative fascination for perverse sexual practices and abnormal individuals. In this, it is similar to pornography. Both types of writing share a compulsive and "seemingly inexhaustible ability to return again and again to common tropes and similar situations" [5]. 

 

Indeed, some critics argue that, like pornography, gothic fiction might ultimately serve a conservative function in that it perpetuates stereotypes and thus ultimately re-inscribes the status quo. And it's true that gothic tales often conclude with the moral order restored and reason triumphant (though rarely with a happy ending). However, at the same time, gothic horror seems to possess an uncanny ability to pass "beyond the limits of its own structural 'meaning'" and in this manner transform "the structure of meaning itself" [6]. 

 

And so, whilst gothic literature might often be predictable, it's never boring. It constantly opens up new worlds of knowledge and provides an opportunity to explore the pleasures of socio-erotic transgression; incest, rape, and same-sex desire are all familiar themes within the genre, not to mention paedophilia, necrophilia, and spectrophilia. 

 

Arguably, Sade takes things furthest in his One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom (written in 1785, but not published until 1904), his masterpiece of torture-porn often described as a gothic novel, even though the Divine Marquis himself rejected the term on the grounds that there was nothing supernatural about the horror and sexual violence in his books [7]. 

 

So, to conclude this briefest of brief introductions to the gothic, let me make clear that what excites about the genre is not that it simply causes gender trouble or allows for things to go bump in the night. More than this, it challenges (and in some cases overturns) many of our ideas about what it is to be human - and, indeed, of how to be human. This gives it broader philosophical importance than those who sneer at ghosts and ghouls might appreciate. 

 

And if, at times, gothic fiction fails as art due to its overreliance on sensational and supernatural elements, it nevertheless more often than not succeeds as a form of resistance to conventional thinking and the heteronormative status quo. And it is this, as indicated, which qualifies it as queer [8]. 

 

And what do I mean by queer?  

 

Well, let me stress that I'm certainly not using the term queer or the concept of queerness as synonymous with either homosexuality or gayness [9]. Indeed, I vigorously object to those who conflate ideas in this manner and use queer as an overarching and unifying label for what are distinct forms of practice, behaviour and identity (often with nothing queer about them). 

 

For me, the appeal of queerness is twofold: 

 

Firstly, it is not a positivity or subject position. It's a transpositional negativity - i.e., a mobile and ambiguous concept that resists any fixed categorical definition and remains permanently at odds with all forms of legitimacy and identity. Queer, ultimately, doesn't refer to anyone or anything; it's a form of non-being "utterly inimical to [...] authentic existence, ontological or natural" [10]. 

 

Secondly, it subsumes and dissolves all forms of dualism; not only sexual and gender oppositions, but also that model of thinking which would keep life and death as absolutely distinct and separate categories. Ultimately, it's this thanatological project that I most wish to further, even if that involves unfolding it within a spooky sexual context. This project, which is both morbid and material, picks up on Nietzsche's contention that life isn't categorically different from or opposed to death; that being alive is, in fact, simply a rare and unusually complex way of being dead [11].

 

Death, we might say, is the material kingdom of the actual and vital signs, although real, are but an epiphenomenal effect of matter. Or, to put it another way, life is a momentary stabilization of solar energy that upon death is released from its molar entrapment back into unformed chaos and an infinite process of molecular disintegration [12]. This becomes important when arguing that there can't really be any serious philosophical objections to romancing corpses or getting it on with ghosts - even whilst there may well be legitimate moral, social, and cultural reservations. 

 

Moving on, we must of course mention the perverse ... 

 

The perverse might be thought of as a more aggressive and transgressive form of queerness; one that takes us to the very heart of a game involving desire, deviation, and damnation. Historically, perversion is tied to political insurrection and involves straying or being diverted from a path, destiny, or objective which is understood as natural or right. To those who live their whole lives on the straight and narrow it is obviously an abhorrent concept. But, personally, I think it’s a good thing to stray off the path; just as it's preferable to fall into sin, rather than fall into line [13]. 

 

Figures like Heathcliff or Dorian Gray are irresistibly drawn towards the perverse. Which is to say they are intellectually predisposed towards evil and that which is unnatural or anti-natural. The former, for example, knowingly engages in practices such as necrophilia and spectrophilia. And there's the rub; Heathcliff is fully aware of what he's doing and what he wants to do. It's the perversion of free will that leads to transgression, says Augustine. And it is transgression that brings death into the world. 

 

But it is also that which brings understanding and gives pleasure and we should never forget or underestimate the pleasure of perversion. As Freud was led to conclude, it's the perversions alone that ultimately make happy [14].

 

Finally, there's one more term which we simply must mention; one made famous by Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche ...

 

The uncanny is, arguably, also a form of queerness. But in designating the sinister, gruesome, and lugubrious it moves beyond sexual strangeness and gender troubling. The uncanny is more likely to give us the creeps than excite our desire. Wuthering Heights is, for me at least, the greatest of all uncanny novels; familiar, yet alien, seductive, yet repulsive; a book in which even the mortal status of the lovers is never fixed.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Queer Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, ed. Ardel Haefele-Thomas, (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). 

      There seems to be some interesting material in this 368 page book divided into three main sections - Queer Times, Queer Monsters, and Queer Forms - although, having said that, it does seem slightly old hat (though maybe I'm just miffed that I wasn't invited to contribute to the book). 

 

[2] 'Elements of Gothic Queerness in The Picture of Dorian Gray' was presented at Treadwell's on 18 May, 2011. This was followed by 'The Scarlet Letter: An Earthly Story with a Hellish Meaning' on 4 July, 2013 (advertised as 'A Slice of American Gothic for American Independence Day'). 

      As for the paper entitled 'Spectrophilia and Other Queer Goings On in the Tale of Wuthering Heights', this was due to be presented at Treadwell's on 7 October, 2014, but unfortunately had to be cancelled due to unforeseen (and unrecalled) circumstances. 

      Together, these essays formed part of a wider project to do with perverse materialism.

 

[3] See George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic, (University of Illinois Press, 2006).

 

[4] See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998). 

 

[5] George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic, p. 9. 

 

[6] Ibid., p. 10. 

 

[7] Sade did admire at least one gothic novel, namely Matthew Gregory’s The Monk: A Romance (1796), a work in which every attempt was made to outrage readers in as many explicit, violent, and perverse ways as possible. 

 

[8] I don't want to overstate the case or make too wide a claim here. Haggerty is right to carefully resist the temptation to uncritically celebrate the gothic and its literary-cultural significance. As he points out, the genre was always somewhat marginal and semi-legitimate and never succeeded in challenging the dominant mainstream fiction of the age, which remained rigidly straight and heteronormative. 

      Also, if it provided alternative (queerer) ways to think through the politics of desire, it was ultimately powerless to prevent the "imposition of sexological thinking at the end of the nineteenth century". At best, the gothic continued to cast a shadow across the bright new world of scientia sexualis. See Queer Gothic, p. 19. 

 

[9] Elisa Glick is a Marxist critic guilty of this; see p. 11 of her book Materializing Queer Desire (SUNY Press, 2009), where she rather weakly explains her reasons for wanting to employ (and I would say misuse) the term queer synonymously with gay, lesbian, and homosexual. 

 

[10] Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 140. 

      I’m tempted, in fact, to drop the term queer altogether here and use instead a notion of the uncanny, which is closely related but without the sexual overtones. 

 

[11] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), III. 109, p. 168. 

 

[12] Those who attended Treadwell's regularly in 2006 will perhaps remember my six week course on thanatology in which these ideas were discussed in detail and at length. The work can be found in The Treadwell’s Papers, Vol. II, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

 

[13] Even such a trite and common expression as the straight and narrow - thought of as the one true path into the future - reveals something crucial about Western metaphysical thinking; note the linkage of truth with linearity and teleology. People think they are strolling along this path naturally or by choice, but in fact they march along it by arrangement and coercion. 

 

[14] Freud made the attainment of (non-functional, non-reproductive) pleasure central to his theory of perversion and stressed that it is the perversions that make happy; their repression which causes suffering and neuroses. Freud also understands that this is why many normal individuals strongly dislike queers who dare to manifest and flaunt their perversity; not only do they find them monstrous and threatening, but also seductive and this places them in the uncomfortable position of having to overcome a secret envy of those who enjoy illicit pleasures. 

      Note too how Freud compares the perversions to the grotesque demons used to illustrate the temptation of the saints. This is precisely how such images and descriptions continue to function within gothic literature; i.e. as uncanny manifestations and queer embodiments of the perverse; a threatening excess of difference and deformity. See his Three Essays on the Theory of Human Sexuality, (1905).